Dialog and Defiance
How is your poetry in dialog with works of other writers and artists? How does it stand in defiance of current norms?
Among the perks of having a second poetry collection (by grace and with so much gratitude), I was recently commissioned to write for the Clyfford Still Museum in Denver. The current exhibit is called Dialogue and Defiance: Clyfford Still and the Abstract Expressionists.
I didn't know much about Still beforehand. I learned that he disengaged from any "art scene," refusing to work commercially, yet kept some contact with contemporary painters (ahem, subsequently more well known) like Rothko and Pollack.
It got me thinking about how poets dialog with and defy language patterns inherited over centuries and the literary currents of our zeitgeist.
Dialog and defiance: both essential to vitality
On the dialog side, I know that whatever I express is interdependent, shaped by a dynamic language environment. As I said here about Pine Soot Tendon Bone: "It’s true that a collection is the work of one individual, but it grows out of a community, too. A body of work takes root and flourishes in internal and external ecosystems."
My psyche/my work is necessarily entangled with the psyches/works of so many past and present writers and artists. There are too many to name.
On the defiance side, I’m aware that creative work I’ve undertaken since Pine Soot Tendon Bone refuses that body-of-work’s norms as well as certain external “norms” (I say “norms” recognizing that poetry doesn’t have many; what I mean are the types of choices you see repeated with some frequency in the current literary landscape).
What defiance feels like: I’m frustrated with the limitations of prior work. What it looks like: An intuitive exploration of unconventional punctuation choices, fragmenting syntax, and nonhuman personas.
Some of these choices put the work outside of what most readers accept as poetry. My choices have implications. They’ll affect if/where this new work will find publication if/when it develops to that stage. I accept that risk because to choose otherwise—to push the work conform to norms of publishers/audiences—would destroy the work’s vitality.
How about you?
How is your current work in dialog with other poets and artists?
How does it stand in defiance of past and/or current norms?
It's worth considering. Share your reflections in the comments.
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Your essay got me thinking after I recently took a 1-day workshop on poetry and cinematography. The way movies and music videos--the music, lighting, imagery--dialogue with poetry. I love to write alongside some poets' themes, forms or lines like Charles Wright, CA Conrad, Jane Hirshfield or rub against other poets and other genres to spark something unexpected. For me currently, this looks like experiments with travel writing and personification in ecopoetry. Thanks for an evocative read!
Love this post, Radha, and having read a few of the new poems see and applaud their defiance. I am in active dialog with many poets, Rebecca Gayle Howell, Lorca, Lauren Camp, Will Woolfitt, Bruce Bond. Their books live on my desk. Bond's Choreomania defies norms too and fills me with pleasure. All my poems are "after" someone in that sense. I don't see a major break with my past work right now, but do see a continuous arc of learning from older poets and contemporaries. I love your poetic courage and urge you on!